Novelist Amy Tan once said of Carmel artist and writer Belle Yang, “It’s as if she senses the world in two languages. She is an American writer who writes in English and thinks in Chinese.”
By visiting Bell Yang’s new exhibition at The Monterey Museum of Art, viewers begin to sense what Amy Tan means. Imagining China: The Art of Belle Yang and Joseph Yang is one of several exhibitions that explores the process of collaboration. In the case of Belle and Joseph Yang, it is a rare relationship between father and daughter revealed through vibrant and delicate illustrations and paintings that trace their journey side-by-side, from China to Carmel. In conversation with Belle Yang, KAZU’s Lisa Ledin learned how far back their creative exchange began.
Dylan Music/KAZU
Belle Yang: I think we really began collaborating after I came back from China in 1989 after the Tiananmen massacre, because I was forced to come back after three years of studying and my father first started telling me stories. Actually, my mother did. But my father got into the act and he took over stories about his childhood in Manchuria, in China, and we would just sit in the evenings with my mother knitting, and he would drink his green tea and tell stories about his childhood with the background of war. My father was very easy to elicit stories from because I would talk about the foods that he ate as a child, which he missed because he had come to the United States. The street foods that he would find on the streets of Beijing, like frozen persimmons that were sold on the back of a flatbed tricycle. And you could see his Adam’s apple working because he was craving them.
Courtesy of the Yang Collection. Joseph Yang.
Lisa Ledin: You’re so visual as you speak. I’m seeing pictures as you’re talking. It’s really nice. You have also created many children’s books.
BY: Yes. I’ve written nine children’s books and three adult nonfiction books about mainland China and my father’s travels. The children’s books are also based on my father’s stories, but a lot are also based on my own, which includes Hannah is My Name, about our immigration to the United States in 1967.
Courtesy of the Yang Collection. © Belle Yang
LL : Amy Tan wrote the foreword to your breakout book, Baba: A Return to China Upon My Father’s Shoulders. How did you connect with Amy Tan?
BY : Amy Tan was the one who was instrumental in connecting me to the publishing world. My work— (my) writing, my art—was sent to her via my friend Sally Lilley, who was married to the ambassador of the United States to China. She sent my work to Amy Tan without telling me, and one day I received a red envelope, which is auspicious. And there was a letter inside which said, “When you’re ready, I can help you.” I waited two years, hoping that she wouldn’t forget. I sent it off and things happened pretty quickly. I love writing and I will continue to write. In fact, I wrote the essay in the catalog that goes with this show. For me, it was a deeply-felt piece that explains my history. But right now I’m focused on painting. I may have a third of my life left to me, and I want to just focus on fine art.
LL: I love what your dad called your home in Carmel.
BY: ‘Deep in the white clouds.’ Because we’re at the mouth of Carmel Valley and the fog comes in and it kind of stops just about where we are.
LL: So, from China to—-
BY: Carmel, deep in the white clouds.
Imagining China: The Art of Belle Yang and Joseph Yang runs through November 24th at the Monterey Museum of Art.
